Alabama football coach Nick Saban has never been much for comparing current and former players, or current and former teams.
When it comes to comparing games, however, Saban is making an exception.
The Crimson Tide are coming off a second consecutive loss to Ole Miss, which is a first in program history, but Saban said last Saturday’s 43-37 setback inside Bryant-Denny Stadium was easier to stomach than last October’s 23-17 loss in Oxford.
“I thought the game we lost last year we lost completely different from the way we lost this game,” Saban said this week in a news conference. “We had energy (this time). We had almost fanatic energy, but we didn’t channel it in the right direction. We kept coming back in the game, but we also shot ourselves in the foot so many times that it made it difficult to overcome.
“Last year, we got ahead in the game and got relief syndrome or something to where they got the momentum, and we could never get it back.”